This memory can’t be cached and must stay in RAM, so it’s not available to other apps.Ĭompressed: The amount of memory that has been compressed to make more RAM available. Wired Memory: Memory required by the system to operate. To the right, you can see where the memory is allocated.Īpp Memory: The amount of memory being used by apps. Memory Used: The amount of RAM being used. Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed. Memory pressure is determined by the amount of free memory, swap rate, wired memory, and file cached memory. Memory Pressure: Graphically represents how efficiently your memory is serving your processing needs. These are great free apps for the Mac.In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, click Memory (or use the Touch Bar) to see the following in the bottom of the window: They are light enough to keep running all the time and the menu bar information makes it easy to keep an eye on what is happening. Stats and Eul perform a similar function using fewer system resources and they don’t have a window taking up desktop space. When you need to see everything that is going on in macOS, Activity Monitor is good, but uses too many resources. CPU, GPU and memory can all show the current temperature if you want to keep an eye on whether the Mac is getting too hot. The GPU and memory displays can show a similar activity history graph. With some items there are several display options and with CPU for example, a mini graph can be included which shows the CPU activity over the last minute or so. The menu bar components can be selected and the order in which they appear can be set. It shows the battery health percentage, maximum and current charge capacities, cycle count, condition and more. In some areas, the eul activity monitor shows more information than Apple’s Activity Monitor and here is the battery section of the drop-down menu bar panel. Activity Monitor has more information here, but is it worth it? Eul shows what you need. It uses around 18 MB of memory, which is significantly less.Įul does not display the full list of running apps and services in either the CPU or memory sections, just the worst offenders. Notice that Activity Monitor is 49 MB and that eul is too small to make this list. There is a summary followed by a list of apps and services using the most memory. That is a big difference, but it is often greater as Activity Monitor is frequently 24% to 25%.Ī bit further down the panel is the memory usage. Look at the screenshot above and notice tat Activity Monitor is 21.4 and eul is 5.2. There are some basic stats and this is followed by a list of the apps using the most CPU. There are several sections and the first shows CPU usage. It shows brief information in the menu bar itself and detailed information when it is clicked. Stats is a free and lightweight system monitor for the menu bar on an Apple Mac and is an alternative to Activity Monitor. They work on new Apple Silicon Macs and older Intel Macs and are free. The two alternatives here use much less CPU, memory and energy and they can be permanently active. I run it, take a quick look at the data and quit as soon as I can. Its energy usage is also high and this will inevitably cause faster battery drain. On my M1 MacBook Air it can be 8 or 9% CPU. On my old Intel MacBook Air, Activity Monitor can use as much as 24% CPU activity. If your Mac is a few years old, the demands placed on the system by Activity Monitor and the latest version of macOS are too great to leave it running all the time. Resource usage is most noticeable with older Mac that have less powerful Intl CPUs, less memory and ageing batteries than with brand new Macs. It’s not a problem for the newest M2 powered Macs, but it is noticeable on the original entry level M1 MacBook Air. Run it and check the tabs to see for yourself if you have an Intel Mac. On older and less powerful Macs, Activity Monitor uses a lot of CPU, memory and energy. There is no doubt that Activity Monitor is a great app, but it is not one that you would want to leave running on the desktop all day because it uses system resources and desktop space. You can easily see technical information like CPU, memory, disk, network and even energy (battery) usage. There are many questions you might need the answer to when using your Mac and Activity Monitor can answer all of them. Is the CPU busy? Is memory or disk space running short? Which apps are using the most CPU and RAM? Why is a file taking so long to download? Is it the network speed? What is the time remaining on a MacBook’s battery? Activity Monitor on the Apple Mac is a useful utility for seeing what is going on under the macOS user interface, but it is too demanding of resources.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |